


Momentary

by cartographicalspine



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Ficlet Collection, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 19:33:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13688322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartographicalspine/pseuds/cartographicalspine
Summary: An exercise in writing six-sentence stories—pushed way past any proper length and decency—told from the perspective of various Dragon Age characters and OCs.





	1. Chapter 1

_1\. Sabrae's Keeper sees much more in her clan than meets the eye. References DA2 and my Mahariel OC, a painfully weak mage-turned-hunter who conceded the First to Merrill._

Marethari watched their bustling camp break up with the dawn, splintering and folding like the past hundred thousand times, an eternity of migrations and scattering to the winds like dry autumnal leaves (though it was not always so).

Her First’s laughter came light and airy from one of the aravels, where she had been roped, almost literally, into helping with the unfurling of sails, the cautious inspection of every minute detail on their vessels. A clever, bright young mage, brought into the fold when her predecessor’s magic died out in his orphaned child, but where she excelled in her studies, she floundered with the clan itself. Mahariel, who could never even dream of achieving a mere  _fraction_  of her talent, had stolen the clan’s hearts out from under Merrill instead.

Pretty, reckless,  _selfish_  little thing, so much like his father in everything except where it truly mattered, in the ability to protect and guide what remained of Sabrae’s legacy. Merrill was precious and rare in a way that no one else could see, not like Marethari did, so it would fall to her to keep that light alive, through whatever peril, darkness, or audacity would dare try to snatch her away.

* * *

_2.The downfall of a house and of the dwarven kingdom's sweetheart, Lady Zinaita Aeducan._

Trian had never loved her like her people did, but that could not stop the bile rising in her throat at the sight of Bhelen’s treacherous face among her father’s men, almost comically desperate and frantic in his false innocence. He tore those cowards from their honor, he tore her people’s hearts from her, and now she would tear him from his every limb, cut by cut by arcing, swinging cut.

Zina raised her blade, felt the course of adrenaline in her veins and the caressing heat of those treacherous blackhearts’ blood on her face, and she lunged, relishing in the fear on her once-brother’s face. His men lay dead at their feet, between them, and he was not long in joining them because for all of Bhelen’s tricks and schemes, he could never hope to even match her on the battlefield  _(should have thought this through more carefully, ‘little brother’)._

And then she was staggering to a stop, legs shaking, arms failing, lungs burning, and she turned her face towards her father’s, who could not look her in the eye but kept his gaze fixed on his blood-splattered ax embedded in her side.  _I will not lose two of my children here,_  he said, still weeping for Trian,  _not like this,_ and Zina breathed dust and blood and rage on the ground, seething and writhing because she could not scream  _you fool you fool you fucking coward fool you’ve just lost us all you king of cowards and fools._

* * *

_3.The disgraced princess meets her fate with as much dignity as she can muster._

They'd dragged Zina around in chains from one camp to the next, all the way back to Orzammar's gates and into the deep and hollow keep beneath the city, further even than Dust Town despite common belief. Her fever rage carried her through the humiliation and choking despair of it all, even as a part of her wept at the thought of ever facing all those ugly, frightened, and disgusted faces again.

 _They erased her Gorim from memory, forever,_  and now they were tossing her back into the Deep Roads like incompetent, witless inbreds. Stone-deaf idiots they were, too cowardly to put the blade to her neck so they were letting the darkspawn do what should have been a headsman's work.

She spat on them all and let her hatred and fury buoy her up, the pain in her side nothing but a twinge as she cursed Bhelen and Endrin and Harrowmont along with the entire Assembly by name, before she turned to her deep and empty tomb to rage herself to an unjust death. Her one regret was that she would never get the chance to see her curse wrap itself around each and every one of their necks, choking their lives out purple-dark and grotesque in the searing heat of the surface sun as they deserved, but by then she was too far gone in delirium and manic anger to care for anything at all.

* * *

_4\. A too-young apprentice tests his willpower in order to seek much-craved attention._

_The rules of the Circle state,_  he recited, and a titter of demons gathered behind Surana's eye, thrashing and coiling into themselves like knots and worms. They'd always been there, that much hadn't changed and never would, for he loved them as they loved him.

Mouse laughed in his face, every single time, when he did that, when he said this, when he parroted words that meant  _nothing_  to a single being in existence in any possible world. He'd laughed when Surana had dismissed his first act so imperiously, too, like pride wouldn't fit him as well as desire did—as though he hadn't already gathered enough demons to him to fuel three entire Annulments.

 _When,_  Mouse insisted, not because he really expected or wanted it but because the boy kept his lesser brethren coming back for it, coy and playful and always so  _very_  careful to toe the line  _just so._  They stared at each other as he ate—sucking greedily at little wedges of something citrusy and glutting his stomach full of fruits and sweetmeats in a way he never did in the land of the living because mages were magic and power and intent and not much else—and Surana echoed,  _the rules of the Circle state_  amidst a fresh burst of keening laughter from the hordes of demons at his door.

* * *

_5\. Many years later, that same apprentice now-harrowed puts on a show for his world._

Surana was a little doll, a silly-looking tangle of limbs and angles bouncing along on strings like the brightly painted puppets on show he'd stared at for an entire afternoon while waiting for his father to return from the docks.

He was a mage, magic and intent and not much else, but that was lacquer and paint over his mannequin face, the smiles that never quite reached his eyes and the brittle facade of control and poise that never quite reached perfection. Uncomfortable to behold up close but safe from a distance, always a distance, so that he could remain a mage and not a puppet in their eyes. But they were all puppets, mages and Templars alike, and how ridiculous they must have looked flailing and smashing together on their hollow limbs and strings, in his head, on his bed, all outspread.

His Templar turned and raised a brow at him, halfway into his armor again before the patrols switched for the morning, and he said,  _what are you thinking about._

Surana thought about all the strings tangled around his limbs and joints, about bumping himself into every wall just to prove that they weren't really there and failing, and said

_finding a pair of scissors_

said

_a theory about invisible strings_

said

_I love you_

said

_I have spent every moment of the last twenty-one years stringing demons along and stringing you along and stringing myself along waiting for someone to look at me and say 'I've-got-you-I'm-proud-of-you-I-love-you' and at no point did I ever think of breaking free so why am I looking for scissors now when the Chantry hid them all from us also have you ever seen a puppet show because what a trip—_

...said,  _I need a new hobby._

* * *

 

 _6\. An ex-Tranquil Herald corresponds by moonlight. Erzi Trevelyan from_ [The Meek](http://archiveofourown.org/series/886737) _._

Trevelyan wrote by the dim light filtering in through the window, a waning crescent moon tonight, because the dying light of the fireplace held too many embers, glowing and—

_bright-bright-bright burning and red-hot and bursting open cracked down to the core and he can’t stop screaming and_

—ink spilled black and slick over his shaky hand on the page, and he ruined the sleeve of his robes trying to mop it up in the aftermath of those electric sharp jolts. Ignoring the memory of shadows creeping along the walls around him, he fumbled for clean paper and a clearer mind, though eventually he had to make due without the latter, as he imagined he would for the rest of his life. Funny how his hands remembered where his mind stuttered to a halt, how the codes and keys he’d carried on his lips hadn’t left him yet. The messenger who slipped him the Grand Enchanter’s words simply nodded in passing, their exchange secret and minute in the anguished bustle of Val Royeaux’s streets.

The sun was rising through the window in the east as he finished, surprised to find his face wet with tears as he watched black bleed out into gray, then soft pinks and blues into beautiful, bright light, and he found himself wanting it to shine on everyone as it did on him right now ( _free mage, free mage, free, free, free_ ). He silently promised the mages the Inquisition’s ear, an official response following as soon as he could convince them through the pounding in his head and the roaring of waves in his chest (of drowning in this long, endless scream) because they deserved as much as he had in this moment.


	2. Sidetracked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A continuation of the six sentence theme centered on side quests from the games.

_ DAO: The Scrolls of Banastor  _ (Surana thinks these blood magic rituals are pretty neat; so does Tamlen after his life is spared by some modified version of them.)

 

The posting was innocuous enough, a single slip of paper among many within the Collective’s requests, faded ink on a yellowed background. Their need for coin outweighed their scruples, and the scrolls themselves were easy enough to come across on their travels; it was almost unnatural how they were drawn to them, little beacons of pages so worn and stained they had half-crumbled to dust already.

Surana handled them with care and patience and impossibly light touches, the pages gossamer in his hands—delicate, spider-like motions. But his eyes darkened with the work, expression like still glass cracking along spiderweb threads—exhaustion, and hunger, he reciprocated consumption with consumption, and his smile gleamed with whatever burning light had burrowed its new home behind his hollow eyes.

He carried the scent of old, reddish stains and copper on him, beneath his fingernails and in his robes, and when he drew his blade in battle, the keening of metal reached a new fever pitch, always exhausted and hungry. They carried one scroll from the Brecilian Forest, two through the Circle Tower, two more down from the Temple mountaintop, and to Redcliffe’s outpost, where they turned back without monetary reward but hands full of stained and heavy knowledge; Tamlen’s smile made the choice for them in the end.

  
  


***

 

DA2:  _ Dark Epiphany  _ (The Deep Roads are pretty rough on Hawkes, and companions get epithets for some time before Hawke feels comfortable with names.)

 

Hawke crouched next to the messenger’s cooling body, dragging their bare forearm across their forehead and leaving sweat and blood streaked across it for their efforts. They listened with half an ear to their companions’ work and dispersed talk as they rifled through the papers in the broken satchel; today, not even the breeze off the sea was enough to cool their tempers, but when they'd tried to go alone, the others had insisted upon coming anyway.

There was reserved interest when the Warden recognized the seals and interpreted the scant lines on the first letter, and there were hushed whispers when they had the Dalish mage attempt to work out the contents of this Avernus’ research. What little the pair could analyze of his strange writings spoke of helpful ‘shipments’ and a request to double the ‘supply’ for next time, at which the Warden’s tired expression darkened like a storm, but he would say no more on the Warden-Commander in favor of cursing their name, and someone else’s name, and then another: seven total.

They reached the dropbox after the trek back to Kirkwall and with a few hours of walking, arguing, and fighting tricksy gangs in dark alleys, and the bundled papers, painstakingly sealed, went inside snugly before the next group of mercenaries showed up.

It was as the Dalish exile had noted, Hawke thought much later as the potion went down in a viscous and cloying way, a concoction rooted in blood magic and darker things—deep and old like the underground roads they were trapped in, black as the darkspawn blood clinging to their clothes, terrible as a brother’s betrayal, or his death.

 

***

 

_ DAI: Chateau d’Onterre  _ (Marlise and Mack Trevelyan similarly kept Erzi’s magic a secret when they were children, which is what Marlise refers to in her last lines.)

 

It was so oppressive that Marlise could not take a full breath from the moment she stepped through the gates and into the mansion, like the smothering sensation was reaching across the Veil for her...for them all. From the looks on her cousins’ faces, she was not alone in that judgment, and the wretched estate was not long in sharing its dark secrets with them. Misery loves its company, agony beckons agony, and they just happened to stumble across one so acute and familiar that she was nearly brought to her knees from nauseating fear alone.

Embrium for the pillowcase, blessed wrappings and leeches for tiny, helpless limbs, water for lungs within a body too young and ignorant to know its curse and the grace in being cut off from the Fade. By the end, she had heard all that the manor’s restless spirit spoke from corner to dust-filled corner, but she was so feverish from terror that she could not bring herself to Mack’s grey-faced sorrow nor Erzi’s pleading sobs before the horror that was once a lonely, frightened little girl.  _ This could have been us,  _ she could have said to her cousins, confronting their years-old crime committed in ignorance, born of innocence;  _ we were so young and loved so much, but could we have brought the same upon ourselves like— _

but she listened to her cousins weep quietly in the silence of the sun-drenched garden instead, holding back sobs and retching heaves of her own for a long, long time.


End file.
